Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…
Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…
The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…
Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…
The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…
You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…
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In his contribution to Denominationalism , Winthrop Hudson suggests that one of the principles of English Independent ecclesiology was the refusal to “make our present judgment and practice a binding law unto ourselves for the future” (25). It's a stance based on a recognition of fallibility and proneness to sin.…
The Greek kapnos (“smoke”) appears twelve times in Revelation. Hold that number, because it might be significant. The twelve uses are grouped into six scenes, alternating between smoke having to do with the worship and glory of God and smoke from hell or hell's allies: A. Smoke of incense, 8:4…
“I believe in subjects and objects,” writes David Martin at the outset of his Future of Christianity (4). He illustrates with a sociological example: He believes in “religious visions of the world to come and the objective status of the dynamics of social and political action.” Martin intends to resist…
Jesus tells His disciples that they are being sent into a field to harvest where they had not sown or labored. “One sows, and another reaps” (John 4:35-38). It's a principle of ministry: Ministry starts in the middle. Even in a fresh mission field, the missionary doesn't enter a place…
In a study of American Protestant schisms between 1890 and 1990, John Sutten and Mark Chaves claim that churches don't divide for purely doctrinal reasons, but rather “in response to attempts by denominational elites to achieve organizational consolidation” (171). The 1848 schism within the Plymouth Brethren, for instance, was about…
In an essay on “Rules of Walking in Fellowship,” John Owen claimed that “Union is the main aim and most proper fruit of love ; neither is there any thing or duty of the saints in the gospel pressed with more earnestness and vehemency of exhortation than this.” For Owen,…
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